Reshaping Metropolitan America: Development Trends and Opportunities to 2030 (Metropolitan Planning + Design)

improving building energy efficiency through such efforts as the US Green Building Council’s LEED scoring system, and changing transportation systems to meet emerging market demands can reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than tax incentives and massive alternative energy investments.

Between 1987 and 2007, the United States added sixty million people—about 25 percent. During that time, its consumption of land for urban uses increased by about thirty-four million acres—about 66 percent.3

living in a typical single-family detached home in an auto-dependent suburb, living in an energy-efficient attached home in a suburban location can reduce total building and transportation energy consumption up to 64 percent. Living in such a home in an urban location can reduce consumption by up to 75 percent.

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many of our institutions are barriers to achieving market-driven preferences. How we should change them is the subject of the last chapter.

Adjusting for the energy used to produce energy, transportation consumes nearly half (48 percent) of all energy, industry about a third (35 percent), and commercial and residential uses about 17 percent.

“public goods” because no one can be excluded from enjoying these benefits (by paying a fee, for instance) and everyone benefits equally (there is no congestion effect in the enjoyment of benefits), so they defy valuation in the private market.

Starting at 4.60 persons per household in 1900, average household size fell steadily to 2.59 persons per household in 2000.19

In most metropolitan areas, land values increase over time at least in proportion to population growth, and the higher the land value the more intensively land needs to be used to justify the cost of acquiring the property and redeveloping it.